Home Blog Page 317

Elizabeth Holmes’s Partner Has a New Blood-Testing Start-Up

0


Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. In the meantime, her partner is starting one of his own.

Billy Evans, who has two children with Ms. Holmes, is trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing,” according to marketing materials reviewed by The New York Times.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because Theranos similarly aimed to revolutionize diagnostic testing. The Silicon Valley start-up captured the world’s attention by claiming, falsely as it turned out, to have developed a blood-testing device that could run a slew of complex lab tests from a mere finger prick.

Mr. Evans’s company is named Haemanthus, which is a flower also known as the blood lily. It plans to begin with testing pets for diseases before progressing to humans, according to two investors pitched on the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had agreed to keep the plans secret. Mr. Evans’s marketing materials, which lay out hopes to eventually raise more than $50 million, say the ultimate goal is nothing short of “human health optimization.”

The Haemanthus testing device.Credit…Haemanthus

A photo provided to potential investors of the start-up’s prototype bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Theranos’s infamous blood-testing machine, variously known as the Edison or miniLab. The device that Mr. Evans’s company is developing is a rectangular contraption with a door, a digital display screen and what the investor materials describe as tunable lasers inside.

Haemanthus says its device will test blood as well as saliva and urine.

The marketing documents provided with the photo say there is “no regulatory oversight — U.S.D.A. confirmed in writing.”

It’s not clear what the company means by that. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Seth W. Christensen, said he was not able to confirm whether the agency had corresponded with Haemanthus. “U.S.D.A. does regulate vet diagnostics,” including blood testing, Mr. Christensen said.

Mr. Evans responded in an interview, “When you’re in stealth, you’re trying to be in stealth. They aren’t going to find anything associated with the name Haemanthus.” Mr. Evans sent a partially redacted document from the U.S.D.A. that said, “It does not appear that the proposed product is within the regulatory jurisdiction” of the Center for Veterinary Biologics, which is a part of the U.S.D.A.

Mr. Evans, the 33-year-old heir to a California hotel fortune who met Ms. Holmes while federal authorities were investigating her, has not publicly discussed the new venture. The documents indicate he has already assembled roughly 10 employees. He describes his employment on social media simply as working for a “stealth start-up.”

James W. Breyer, the well-known venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook, said his team had been asked to put in money and decided against it “for many of the same reasons we passed twice on Theranos.”

“In diagnostics, we’ve long held that the difference between a compelling story and a great company lies in scientific defensibility and clinical utility,” he wrote in an email.

If sequels are de rigueur in the so-called disruptive world of technology, this one is particularly bold. Theranos became one of the most celebrated start-ups in the globe last decade and attracted both big-time investors (Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison) and a board of advisers that included Henry Kissinger.

Ms. Holmes, often clad in a black turtleneck that invited comparisons to the Apple founder Steve Jobs, was feted on magazine covers, and at the White House.

Few knew that Theranos’s technology could not diagnose hundreds of conditions it claimed it could. As was chronicled in The Wall Street Journal, a best-selling book, a podcast, television series and later criminal proceedings, Theranos was largely using third-party technology to run rudimentary assays — when it did any testing at all. Patients received false diagnoses. The company crumbled ahead of Ms. Holmes’s indictment for fraud.

Ms. Holmes, who has always maintained that she is innocent, was convicted of fraud in 2022 and sentenced to 11 years in prison. She is incarcerated in a Bryan, Texas, federal prison.

Mr. Evans’s idea for Haemanthus traces back at least a year and a half, when he incorporated the company in Delaware, according to public corporate filings. Documents filed in Delaware and Texas show that its offices have been at various addresses in the trendy South Lamar neighborhood of Austin, Texas, where Mr. Evans lives with his and Ms. Holmes’s two children.

Haemanthus began by soliciting $3.5 million in funding from friends and family and this spring began reaching out to other well-to-do backers in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area for an additional $15 million, according to the investor materials.

The billionaire Michael Dell’s investment firm turned down the effort, according to two people briefed on the outreach.

The one investor who could be identified in public records is Matthew E. Parkhurst, the part owner of a Mediterranean tapas bar in downtown Austin and other investments. Mr. Parkhurst did not respond to requests for comment.

Much of the Haemanthus executive team hails from Luminar, a struggling self-driving car company where Mr. Evans worked for two years, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Pet health care is the first market Mr. Evans’s company aims to address. The start-up has thus far received one patent.

According to the company’s marketing materials and patent, the Haemanthus device will use a laser to scan blood, saliva or urine from pets and analyze the samples on a molecular level. In a matter of seconds, the marketing material said Mr. Evans’s machine would be able to identify and qualify biomarkers such as glucose and hormones, and deploy what the company calls deep learning models to detect cancer and infections.

Animal medicine has grown into a colossal industry as private-equity firms have increasingly acquired and consolidated independent veterinary practices.

Pet cancer screenings alone are a multibillion-dollar market. Edgemont Partners, a health care investment bank, describes it as a “recession-proof industry.”

Haemanthus told investors that it had roughly two dozen advisers, including veterinarians and diagnosticians, though it did not name them.

Haemanthus’s materials say the long-term goal is to develop a stamp-size, wearable version of the product for humans. “Based on our experience and partner input,” it says, that will require three years and $70 million.

The investor presentation makes no mention of Mr. Evans’s connection to Ms. Holmes.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.



Source link

Everton stage comeback to dent Fulham's European ambitions

0




Highlights from the Premier League match between Fulham and Everton.



Source link

Pope Leo the White Sox Fan: Something to Celebrate for Chicago’s South Side

0


Stanley Brown was up late on Thursday, monitoring all the news about the new pope, Leo XIV, including revelations that he grew up as a Chicago White Sox baseball fan. As soon as Mr. Brown heard that, he knew something very important.

“If he’s a White Sox fan, then he can identify with suffering,” said Mr. Brown, 72, a village trustee in Dolton, Ill., the town where the pope grew up. “But it doesn’t matter how bad they are, we stay loyal as Sox fans. That’s not something you just give up.”

Chicago has long been divided between its two baseball teams, the White Sox on the South Side and the Cubs on the north. Both are known more for losing than winning over their century-plus histories. But the Northsiders usually attracted more attention as the cuddly, lovable Cubbies, with their boutique stadium, afternoon games, celebrity renditions of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and the hand-operated scoreboard at Wrigley Field.

The White Sox, playing inside a less charming stadium in a grittier part of town, are far from chic. But there is an unmistakable pride held by their fans, especially now.

The Cubs may have won the World Series more recently, in 2016, and may be considered a more fashionable brand. But the White Sox have the pope.

“That tells you he’s a real person,” said Courtney White, an athletic coordinator for youth sports in Dolton. “I mean, he’s from Dolton and he’s a White Sox fan. You can’t get more real than that.”

Being a White Sox fan is not easy. It requires devotion, loyalty, faith and above all else, forgiveness. It almost sounds like an internship for a job at the Vatican.

Pope Leo was born Robert Francis Prevost and grew up in a modest single-family house at 212 141st Place in Dolton, a middle- and working-class town just across the line from Chicago’s southern boundary. As soon as he was named pope on Thursday and identified as a Chicagoan, one of the first things people here wanted to know was, Sox or Cubs?

At first, rumors circulated that he was, gasp, a Cubs fan. But his brother John Prevost explained on WGN in Chicago that, although their mother’s family was from the North Side and harbored allegiances to the Cubs, the pope favored the White Sox (their father was a Cardinals fans, appropriately enough for the father of a prelate).

By Friday evening, his White Sox bona fides were validated. While living in Rome in 2005, he managed to make it to Game 1 of the World Series in Chicago. He was even spotted in the stands during the national television broadcast. The White Sox won the game, 5-3, and went on to sweep the Houston Astros for their first World Series title since 1917.

Pope Leo was born in 1955, amid a run of relative success for the White Sox. Weeks after he turned 4, they made it to the World Series, losing to the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were decent over the next few years but weren’t able to make it back to the World Series again until 2005.

Robert Prevost was not particularly interested in playing sports, according to his friend, James Priestley, 69, a lawyer from Naperville, Ill., who attended both a seminary high school in Michigan and college at Villanova with the pope. Bob, as Mr. Priestley knew him, was more passionate about academics, philosophy and spiritual matters than who stole the most bases in 1961 (it was Luis Aparicio of the White Sox).

“I would say there is really no sports angle here,” Mr. Priestley said. “He was always such a sweet, caring, intellectual guy, exactly the kind of person you hope would become pope. But he didn’t talk much about sports, that I recall. If you asked him about Catholic doctrine or something like that, he could talk all day about that.”

When they attended St. Augustine Seminary High School near Holland, Mich., a boarding school for boys, all students were required to participate in sports. Mr. Priestley recalled the pope participating out of obligation rather than passion. He also recalled an annual party among their peer group to watch a Chicago Bears football game, and the pope attended at least one of those.

Mr. Priestley, on the other hand, is a devoted White Sox supporter, who just watched his team lose four straight games this week, in typically sloppy fashion. This is an organization that set a record last season for most losses — 121. The White Sox today are in a familiar spot, last place in the American League Central. The Cubs are in first place in National League Central.

“The tradition says that the Cubs fans are snooty and soft and the White Sox fans are tougher,” Mr. Priestley said. “I don’t really buy into all that. But I can tell you that there are some Cubs fans in the southland suburbs. I don’t think there are too many White Sox fans to the north.”

On Friday, the White Sox played their first home game since the pope’s election. Ann Allie, 46, a physician from Chicago, said she was worried when she first heard that the pope was a Cubs fan.

“I was relieved when I heard he likes the White Sox,” she said. “It’s really cool, and it makes sense.”

Art Ortiz, a web designer at the game with his family, is a rare example of a White Sox fan originally from the North Side. But he was taken to a game as a child in the 1980s, and fell in love. He hoped the new pope might help the fortunes of his club.

“It’s a blessing,” he said. “And we need it.”

About 20 minutes south of the stadium, Dolton has a rich baseball tradition, too. One street is named after Lou Boudreau, the Hall of Fame player for Cleveland, who grew up in nearby Harvey, Ill. The Dolton Boys was a Little League powerhouse for many years, until fewer and fewer kids participated. Mr. White, the athletic coordinator, played through high school and was coached by Mr. Brown, the village trustee. They said they were negotiating with the nonprofit The Players Alliance to help revitalize baseball in the town.

“Baseball used to be everything, until they rolled out that basketball,” Mr. Brown said as he looked over one of the municipal fields where he coached both his son and Mr. White. “Now, it’s hard to get kids to play.”

A few blocks away, in front of the pope’s childhood home, several people came to visit on Friday. Some, like Ralph Pizza, 65, a retired architect, grew up a few blocks away on 146th St., and said he and most of his friends were White Sox fans. But he did know some Cubs fans there, too.

John Crowley, a retired electrician, is 68 and from the North Side. He roots for the Cubs but dared to make the trip south. He is also Catholic, and wanted to see the house where the new pope grew up. He is thrilled that Pope Leo is from the Chicago area, but not as much that he is a White Sox fan. He promised not to hold it against him.

“It’s OK,” Mr. Crowley said. “They can use the help.”



Source link

Earthquake Rocks Parts of Tennessee and Georgia

0


Residents in Tennessee and Georgia were jolted on Saturday morning by an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.1, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The earthquake had its epicenter just outside of Greenback, Tenn., a town of about 1,000 people, but was felt as far away as Atlanta.

Shortly after the quake, people in the region logged reports with the U.S. Geological Survey about where they felt it. Reports of shaking came from as far away as Nashville and Charlotte, N.C.

There were only a few instances of light damage reported around the epicenter, and no reports of moderate or heavy damage, according to those who self-reported to the Geological Survey.

The area, known as the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone, extends across Tennessee into northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama. Minor earthquakes occur annually, but the zone is not known to have major tremors.

As seismologists review available data, they may revise the reported magnitude of Saturday’s earthquake.

The last time a strong earthquake was felt in the region was 2018, when a 4.4 magnitude tremor rattled houses but caused little damage.

The earthquake was still novel enough to generate aftershocks on social media.

People from Asheville, N.C., to Gatlinburg, Tenn., outside of Knoxville, reported feeling the earth shaking as they enjoyed their morning coffee.

One user poked fun at the earthquake’s lack of impact, sharing an image of patio furniture with a single chair knocked over, captioned: “I survived the 2025 Knoxville earthquake. We will rebuild.”



Source link

A Packing List of Apps to Download Before You Travel

0


So you can whip together a weekend bag or fit a fortnight’s worth of outfits into a rolling suitcase, but does your status as “packing guru” extend to your phone or tablet? Think of your device as a second carry-on, with its own packing list of apps that are essential for entertainment, getting around, safety and more.

“Everyone talks about making the super app, the one place for everything you need,” said Gilbert Ott, partnerships director at Point.me, a website that helps travelers manage loyalty points, “but no one has done it yet.” Until that super travel app exists, here are some suggested apps to download before you go.

Public Wi-Fi networks like those in cafes and hotels may not be secure, so to keep criminals from intercepting passwords, credit card numbers and emails, “it’s better to encrypt your internet activity,” said Mr. Ott. One method to keep data secure is to download and use virtual private networks like NordVPN or ExpressVPN, which encrypt your web doings. Both charge about $13 per month for a monthly plan, and about half that rate for a yearly plan. Another VPN provider, Mullvad, charges about $5.50 per month.

It may be tempting to store copies of important documents like passports, health insurance cards and prescriptions on your phone as photos, but it’s more secure to use apps that encrypt that information, like 1Password (starting at $35.88 per year) and Microsoft OneDrive Personal Vault (included with a $99.99-per-year Microsoft 365 subscription or, for nonsubscribers, three files free storage).

The U.S. government’s free Mobile Passport Control app can help U.S. citizens and some other groups — even travelers not in the Global Entry program — make their way through immigration and customs more quickly by scanning their passport into the app and adding a selfie within four hours of arrival. Preloading the information speeds your interaction with the officer.

For detailed information on public transportation that can go beyond Google Maps, Moovit (free with ads or Moovit+ with additional features and no ads for $17.99 per year) and Citymapper (free with ads or $9.99 per year) can help with routes, fares and trip length around the world. In cities like New York and London, make sure you’ve loaded a credit or debit card in your digital wallet and set it up for transit to avoid lines by using touchless payment at turnstiles.

In some countries, hailing a cab on the street may be difficult or unsafe. So where Uber and Lyft aren’t available, download local trusted ride-hailing apps that offer set fares and location tracking. In Vietnam, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, for example, Grab offers rides in cars, taxis and on the backs of motorcycles. In India, Ola is a popular choice.

For hours spent in planes, trains and hotel rooms, load your device with a mix of diversions and destination information. Taylor Beal, a travel blogger from Philadelphia, who leads high school groups on trips to Europe, recommends borrowing electronic library books using Libby and Hoopla. The apps are free but require a local library card from one of the more than 90,000 participating public libraries and schools.

For road trips in the United States, the phone app Autio ($35.99 annually, with a free trial) offers 23,000 short stories and information about the surrounding landscape and history, based on your location. Offerings include Kevin Costner on the northern Great Plains and John Lithgow on “Footloose” filming locations.

Keeping track of who paid for what among a group of friends can be a fun-killing chore. Jamie Larounis, a travel industry analyst for Upgraded Points, recommends Splitwise Pro ($39.99 per year, or a limited free version), which tracks and divides up expenses for taxis, meals and more. Other apps like Tricount (free) and Settle Up (free, or $19.99 per year for the premium version) offer similar services.

For tracking flights and making plans either solo or with companions, TripIt (free version or TripItPro $49 per year) and Wanderlog (free version or Wanderlog Pro for $39.99 per year) can tame even complicated itineraries.

You may already have Google Translate on your device, but that app also has some lesser-known handy features. Point your camera at a foreign menu, train station sign or receipt, for example, and Google can translate it — even with non-Roman characters. The Conversation button in the app lets you pass your phone back and forth when you’re trying to get directions, order food, ask for help and more. You can even create a custom phrase book in the app.

Bloomberg Connects has teamed up with more than 800 museums and other cultural spaces, like the New York Botanical Garden, around the world to offer free information on their exhibits, complementing local organizations like the Musée Carnavalet, a history museum in Paris, which often have institution-specific apps.

Of course, there’s also always the good, old-fashioned way to travel — wandering around and letting serendipity take the lead. Is there an app for that, too?





Source link

Chelsea Women 1 – 0 Liverpool Women

0



Match report and highlights as Chelsea became the first WSL side to complete an unbeaten season over 22 games; Aggie Beever-Jones’ late goal secured a 1-0 victory over Liverpool; The win also saw WSL champions Chelsea achieve a record points total in the league with 60 points



Source link

Remarrying in Retirement Can Mean Tricky Money Talks

0


Marriage inevitably involves financial compromises both small and large. Joint or individual checking accounts? How much is too much to spend on a car? Name-brand or store-brand groceries?

When a couple remarries late in life, the stakes get higher. How should the expenses for those bucket-list retirement trips be divided? Whose name goes on the deed to the new condo? Who inherits the house or stock portfolio: the surviving spouse or that person’s children from a prior marriage?

Many newlywed retirees find that the answers to these questions evolve. For a retired director of a nonprofit and a retired I.T. professional in upstate New York, that meant revisiting their expectations of who would pay for what.

“We just kind of talked about what we were both bringing to the marriage financially,” said Elaina Clapper, a retired director for an agency supporting domestic violence victims. Ms. Clapper, 76, said she had been divorced for roughly 40 years before marrying David Clapper in 2018.

“For a while, David was paying me a certain amount of money each month” toward household expenses, Ms. Clapper said. But in time, the couple, who live in Watertown, N.Y., decided it would be easier for each partner to be responsible for certain monthly expenses.

“There are certain bills she pays. There are certain bills that I pay,” said Mr. Clapper, 67. “We adjust it in a way that we both feel is equitable.”

As life spans increase and the stigma around divorce fades, Americans 65 and older are bucking a trend by getting remarried at an increasing frequency, according to research from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University. The rate of people in that age group remarrying after a death or divorce edged higher from 1990 to 2022, rising to 5.1 from 4.6 people per thousand. That’s a marked contrast to the overall population, where the rate of remarriage plunged by roughly half.

It’s a trend that forces couples to consider potentially complicated scenarios regarding how, or if, to merge their finances.

“The later in life you come to a relationship, depending on the complexity of your prior life, the more complicated merging tends to be,” said Jean Chatzky, founder of HerMoney, a multimedia platform for women’s financial empowerment.

Older couples are more likely to have retirement accounts, real estate and other assets that could be tricky to mingle and even more difficult to unmingle in the future. One or both partners might have children from a previous relationship, complicating questions of who inherits what.

The easiest strategy to prevent unintended entanglement is surprisingly hard to practice, according to one expert. Lee Meadowcroft of Skinner Law in Portland, Ore., said he advised clients in this situation to keep things like bank accounts separate, particularly if they want to preserve their assets for their own heirs, adult children in particular.

“Keeping everything very separate seems to work the best, but it’s a rare couple who can actually do that for a long time,” he said. “Although there are ways of protecting finances and keeping things very clear, practically, those things usually fall apart.”

Minor discrepancies in money management are fairly common among people who remarry in their later years, said Scott Rick, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Michigan who studies how romantic partners navigate these differences. “I think you have to be more understanding that their spending habits might seem weird to you, and they might have hobbies or quirks they might have developed over the decades before they met you,” Dr. Rick said.

“You tend to get people set in their ways quite a bit more,” said Shaun Williams, a partner at Paragon Capital Management in Denver. “There has to be a long leash of understanding that they’ve been doing it this way for 40-plus years. You’re not going to change them,” he said.

While a less-formal approach works for many couples, it can have potentially serious consequences for widows, one retirement expert warns.

Cindy Hounsell, president of the nonprofit Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement, said that women often come into second marriages with less accumulated wealth than their male partners do. This is especially the case for older women whose generations were limited in terms of career advancement and earnings opportunity, she said.

Ms. Hounsell said a scenario she encountered frequently was that, although these women contribute — sometimes significantly — to housing expenses after a second marriage, widowhood can be financially perilous for those who have no legal claim to a home inherited by her stepchildren. For example, some spouses contributed to a purchase but their name may not be on the deed.

“The thing we often hear in our workshops is, ‘My mother put down part of the down payment but can’t afford to live there,’” she said. “The situation is their mother won’t have a place to live.” And if heirs sell the home, that spouse has no legal claim to the proceeds.

Outcomes like the ones Ms. Hounsell warns about are one reason estate-planning pros are big proponents of tools like prenuptial agreements, life insurance and trusts. “Having a prenup is important because it forces a conversation of what happens if this marriage ends because of death, and who gets what,” said Ginger Skinner, founder of an estate law practice in Portland, Ore., and a colleague of Mr. Meadowcroft’s.

A discussion about a prenuptial agreement, while perhaps uncomfortable, can bring to light assumptions or unspoken differences between spouses, said Ms. Skinner. For instance, if both partners have children from previous relationships, they might have different ideas about who is entitled to what after each of them dies. “Parents can have split loyalties in between a new spouse and their kids,” she said.

Life insurance is one instrument people use to allocate assets intended to be inherited by spouses or children from previous relationships, while significant wealth disparities can prompt couples to contribute proportionately toward household costs based on their means rather than splitting expenses down the middle.

The calculations can get complex. Mr. Williams of Paragon Capital Management said he had one client, significantly wealthier than her second husband, for whom he developed a formula to calculate his ownership share of her house. If he outlives her, and the house is sold, he will receive proceeds from the sale based on his financial contributions to maintenance and upkeep over the years, Mr. Williams said.

For people with significant assets, trusts can protect a financial legacy if the new spouse has large health care costs not covered by Medicare, such as residence in a nursing home or memory-care facility.

Ms. Clapper said she had her will revised shortly after her marriage for this reason. She said she wanted to make sure that his contributions to their joint household expenses would be recognized if she dies first. “Everything pretty much goes to my sons and grandsons, but there’s also a clause in it that provides something for David,” she said.

Mr. Clapper said he hadn’t expected to be included as a beneficiary in his wife’s will, but he was grateful. “I appreciated that she wanted to include me in the mix,” he said.

Planners say that while these kinds of legal structures may seem cold or transactional, they create a financial cushion that can protect the surviving spouse if he or she has to vacate their home when the decedent’s heirs sell it. Even so, estate and retirement planning pros say friction can arise when real estate is involved.

“Homes, residences are difficult. Conceptually, they’re easy,” said Michael Fiffik, managing partner at Fiffik Law Group in Pittsburgh. But the emotional attachment people feel toward home — especially longtime family homes — can make estate planning fraught.

Mr. Meadowcroft said conflicts can arise when a homeowner gives their spouse the legal right to live in a home they owned until after the spouse’s death. “When there’s a house involved and the new spouse is living in the house, the kids are sometimes just waiting for the other one to die.”

Some older couples who run the numbers might find that the best financial decision is not getting married at all, Mr. Meadowcroft said. “It can get so messy, and it can cause so many problems,” he said.

For instance, marriage triggers inheritance rules around certain retirement assets. If one spouse has such an account, Mr. Fiffik said, he or she may be required to name the other as a beneficiary. And if a person with one of these accounts wanted to bequeath that asset to someone else, such as a child, for instance, he or she would have to get their new spouse to legally cede their right to it. “Retirement accounts are something that always require extra attention,” he said.

For some widows and widowers, remarriage may mean forfeiting certain pension or Social Security benefits. “If someone is getting a pension, they may not want to remarry, because that could go away,” Mr. Williams said.

Mr. Meadowcroft recalled one client couple, both in their 80s, who chose to remarry. They decided to have a religious ceremony, but kept their respective estates separate by never getting a marriage license.

“They said, in the eyes of God, they’re married,” Mr. Meadowcroft said. “The state’s purpose for marriage doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s simply who gets your stuff when you die.”



Source link

‘Don’t Need a Deal.’ Top Trump Economic Adviser Is All in on His China Hardball

0


The first 100 days of the second Trump administration have been a whirlwind. And Stephen Miran, the chair of President Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, has been at the center of what he calls “the volatility.” Mr. Trump has raised import taxes to levels not seen since the 1930s. And trade talks to roll them back — or not — are in flux, leaving the trajectory of the U.S. economy, consumer prices and global trade in limbo.

Miran, a Ph.D. economist trained at Harvard — who is renown for floating the idea of a Mar-a-Lago Accord to “restructure the global trading system” — has been put in the position of explaining the president’s thinking and ultimate goals.

On Wednesday, just before the United States and Britain announced a framework for a trade agreement and ahead of trade talks this weekend between the administration and Chinese officials, Miran spoke with The Times’s Talmon Joseph Smith at his office next to the White House. And he stood by the president’s unconventional moves.

The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You’ve said in public remarks that you are not on the negotiating team, but as an economist, do you believe that this country’s economy can sustain what the Treasury secretary has called the “embargo” levels of current tariffs on China?

Yeah, so look, the president has acted with historic scope and speed to put American workers on fairer ground vis-à-vis our trading partners. I don’t think anybody could possibly say that the policy adjustment was not historic or extraordinary. And as a result, there’s been volatility in financial markets. There can also be volatility in economic data, but I think it’s important to understand that volatility doesn’t necessarily mean anything greater for the long term.

And so is it possible that economic activity gets substituted from one month to another? Yeah. Are firms waiting to find out the outcomes of the negotiations? Yeah. Are they waiting to find out that the tax bill is being passed and that we’re going to avoid the biggest tax hike in history next year because the president’s 2017 tax cuts are not going to expire? Yeah, they’re waiting for that, too.

But when you wait on a decision, because you’re waiting for information, it doesn’t mean you’re putting off that decision forever.

On China, specifically, the president, in the last few days, has said we don’t even necessarily need to do a deal. That has left market participants I speak to very confused and consumers quite fearful.

So, the president has said two things. He said, one, he thinks we’ll have a deal. He’s said that many times. And two, we don’t need a deal. Those can both be true.

You all swept into office on the back of frustration regarding the cost of living and inflation. High up on that list was housing. So what is this administration’s policy to address the housing shortage?

Regulations throughout the economy hold back firms from producing what they could in order to increase supply. If you have not enough supply of something, if prices are too high, the best thing to do is just get the government out of the way and let firms make more of it. And that’s why the Trump administration is engaging in a whole-of-government deregulation drive.

The previous administration and some in Congress, on a bipartisan basis, were looking to commit to federal-led policies to, for example, give “carrots” to jurisdictions that decided to get rid of certain regulations and zoning in a way that could allow for more building, and to withhold those extra funds from jurisdictions that did not. Is there anything similar coming from you all in that vein, or do you see this as a state and local issue that doesn’t pertain to what you all do from the White House?

No, I see us as being able to encourage states and localities to follow us in our deregulatory agenda.

But I’m specifically asking within housing regulation and zoning.

It would be helpful if other jurisdictions followed suit.

Followed suit on what? Because maybe this is my ignorance, but I’ve not seen anything from this White House so far. Granted, it’s early.

No, you’re correct. You’re correct. You’re correct that it’s early and that we’re been focused on trade. We’ve been focused on the tax bill.

Why did DOGE fail to meet its stated savings goals? Because there’s a shortfall from the promised trillions.

Even cutting hundreds of billions is, I think, a huge accomplishment. I think Doge has done a fantastic job.

A big goal of this administration is to reshore manufacturing. We saw a manufacturing construction boom from 2020 or so to 2024. Since the fall, it’s fallen. Should we expect, as a barometer of success for this administration, that manufacturing construction surges again?

Manufacturing construction I expect will surge as a result of our policies. And by the way, it’s not just trade and isolation, it’s trade, tax and deregulation, right? And if you make the United States a much more competitive environment by providing further tax relief, by slashing regulations that make it easier to build stuff here, to make stuff here, and you start addressing asymmetries and trade through tariffs and negotiations and other policies, then you’re making the United States a more competitive place to do business.

Fixed-income investors based in Asia and Europe have told me they plan on gradually rotating out of U.S. assets, including bonds. Do you think they are exaggerating? Or that market commentators covering these moves are exaggerating the extent of it? And then second, do you all welcome a weakening of demand for the dollar?

So with the second, I have to direct you to my colleagues a couple blocks down at the Treasury Department. With respect to the first one, as I said before, it was really a historically extraordinary policy change, and the fact that there was financial market volatility as a result shouldn’t be surprising.

But when the dust settles, capital will follow investment opportunities. Investment opportunities are a function of economic opportunities, and that’s why President Trump is focused on creating the most dynamic American economy in history.

The president said in a “Meet the Press” interview, “We were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we’re essentially not doing business with China, therefore we’re saving hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s very simple.” So that’s inaccurate, right? Do you, when you’re advising the president, feel comfortable redirecting or fact-checking him if or when he gets things wrong?

So I don’t think the president was wrong. You know, America was running a trade deficit. And if trade has come to decline, if trade with China has come to decline, then, you know, that portion of the trade deficit will be able to fall.

“We’re losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we’re essentially not doing business with China,” therefore, we are saving hundreds of billions of dollars? You think that’s an accurate representation of how to talk about trade deficits?

That’s how the president understands that. And I think that’s correct. I think the President’s correct.

Congress is trying to work its way through a budget right now. I know you’re not responsible for Congress, but the administration has talked about a commitment to lowering deficits, and yet it also wants tax cuts and a trillion-dollar defense budget. So how does that add up?

So a couple things. One is that higher growth will make up revenue. And I think that lots of people consistently underestimate that, and are consistently wrong. There was no evidence that there was a long-run decline in tax revenues as a result of T.C.J.A. — the president’s tax cuts. Growing the economy is one of the best ways to grow revenues, and that was the experience with the president’s first tax cuts.

How is keeping tariffs that are high enough to raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue consistent with the president’s promise to lower costs for businesses and consumers?

Because I don’t believe that the tariffs are ultimately going to really raise costs. I think that in the short run, volatility is possible, but in the long run, American consumers are flexible about where we import from, and if one country comes to a trade deal with us, by which they open their markets and allow us to export into their economy the way they export into ours, then we can source our production from friendlier countries, instead of countries that rip us off.

But a lot of experts in freight think that you’re wrong; that supply chains take months, if not years, to move, and so there will not be substitution, there will just be higher costs.

Instead of buying stuff from China, we could buy stuff from another country. Or we can make stuff here. We can shift our demand across borders. That makes us more elastic.

It’s true that we’re early, and it’s true that there can be volatility in the short term, but are we talking a few weeks? Are we talking about a few quarters? Are we talking about a couple of years?

You’ve hit on something that economists have never really been able to settle on. You know, the truth is that it’s going to vary from product to product, right? And some products, it’s probably relatively easy to switch suppliers. And other products, it may take years. And so, it’s going to vary.

Do we need to understand from this administration, and from you, that the president is dead serious about a reordering of global trade markets, and that there’s not going to be some major pullback from this stance?

The president has been clear that there may be disruptions. And he talked about the dolls — he’s talked about other things. I think he’s been upfront about this the entire time.

I guess, the concern about the dolls — where the president said that, rather than 30 maybe a young girl could only get, you know, a couple or three — is that people are concerned even more so about, you know, crucial inputs to U.S. manufacturers. Forty percent or so of them use imported parts or finished goods.

The president has said that there can be disruptions. And there’s lots of negotiations happening right now with almost 20 different trading partners. The president is one of the biggest, best negotiators in American history.

I’ve spoken with a lot of economists — plenty of whom I think you’re friendly with, as well as market participants, mostly in the bond market — who think that in order to take this position you’ve given up some of your intellectual integrity, and are willing to bend the facts and bend economic principles in service of the political goals of this administration. How do you respond to that view?

I think that’s ridiculous, and I think that it’s very common for people to project their own political preferences onto other people. You know, the administration is focused on creating a dynamic, healthy, robust economic boom for Americans — and we’re going to do that.

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you Monday.

We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.



Source link

‘Sinners’ Box Office Success Could Put It in Hollywood’s Horror Hall of Fame

0


Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” is on a pace to collect at least $330 million in worldwide ticket sales for Warner Bros. by the end of its run, several box office analysts said, a haul that would put it in Hollywood’s horror hall of fame.

Ticket sales on that level, for instance, would be on a par with those for Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning “Get Out,” which took in $256 million globally in 2017, or $337 million when adjusted for inflation. Among original horror movies, “Sinners” would be the biggest since 2018, when “A Quiet Place,” directed by John Krasinski, took in $440 million in today’s dollars.

In terms of franchise-starting horror films, “Sinners” would rank higher than John Carpenter’s original “Halloween,” which generated $47 million in 1978, or an adjusted $241 million. “Sinners” would be in line with Wes Craven’s first “Scream” ($358 million) and far above James Wan’s “Saw” ($180 million) and Oren Peli’s “Paranormal Activity” ($293 million).

Mr. Coogler didn’t conceive of “Sinners,” an audacious Southern vampire fantasia set in the 1930s, as part of a series. “I wanted the movie to feel like a full meal: your appetizers, starters, entrees and desserts — I wanted all of it there,” he told Ebony magazine. “I wanted it to be a holistic and finished thing.”

But “Sinners” could easily start one if Mr. Coogler changed his mind, giving him immense power in Hollywood in general and at Warner Bros. in particular.

“What is impressing everyone is how deeply the movie is connecting and bringing audiences back for repeat viewing and expanding the audience,” David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said on Friday.

“The movie is going to be worth a fortune in streaming,” he added. “Sinners” will exclusively appear on Max, the streaming service affiliated with Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. declined to comment. The studio’s internal estimates show “Sinners” finishing between $300 million and $330 million.

“Sinners” was an instant success when it arrived in theaters in mid-April. Warner Bros. initially estimated that it had collected $46 million in the United States and Canada during its first weekend, later revising the figure to $48 million.

Even so, it was not immediately clear when or if “Sinners” would make money for Warner Bros., which spent at least $150 million to make and market the film. As the creative force behind the “Black Panther” and “Creed” franchises, Mr. Coogler, 38, was a highly sought-after filmmaker. To win the rights — multiple studios bid on the project — Warner Bros. agreed to give Mr. Coogler a cut of gross ticket sales (before a studio deducts costs).

And theaters keep roughly 50 percent of the gross.

Several analysts said on April 20 that for Warner Bros. to make money, “Sinners” would need to attract substantial crowds in the weeks ahead. Its ability to do so was a question: Most movies have a difficult time drawing continued attention from consumers these days, even if they have terrific reviews.

“The trajectory for this film was predicted by no one,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst at Comscore, which collects box office data, said in an email. (Mr. Coogler’s fans would most likely beg to differ.)

Mr. Dergarabedian noted that domestic ticket sales for “Sinners” had declined only 5 percent from its first weekend to the second, one of the smallest such declines on record for a movie arriving to more than $35 million. Only James Cameron’s “Avatar” (2009) ranks better, with a 2 percent decline.

In its zeal to work with Mr. Coogler, Warner Bros. also agreed to relinquish its ownership of “Sinners” after 25 years. Mr. Coogler, who wrote, directed and produced the movie, would then own it.

Some rival film companies were shocked that Warner Bros. would give a film away, even after 25 years. Other studios, however, have occasionally made similar deals for other filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino, who first secured “ownership reversion” in the 1990s while making films for Miramax.

Mike De Luca, a chief executive of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, called industry consternation over the ownership aspect of the deal “ignorant and laughable” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on April 22.

Mr. Coogler “made a pretty effective case for this movie, especially with its themes of Black ownership,” Mr. De Luca told that trade publication. “Frankly, we’re proud to be able to give it to Ryan.”



Source link

How Much Do People Pay for Newsletters Like Substack? It Can Be Surprising.

0


Despite the surprise, Ms. Hermann-Johnson didn’t consider culling her list. As she read through her paid newsletters — among them from Nora McInerny, a grief writer; Laura McKowen, a sobriety writer; and Catherine Newman, a memoirist and novelist — there were no surprises. All were writers she read, loved and felt good about giving money to.

“I just want to support them and their work, and that’s how I feel like I can do it,” she said.

Hamish McKenzie, one of Substack’s founders, wrote in a Substack post last year that Ben Thompson, a tech analyst who writes the blog Stratechery, had inspired an early version of his company. Mr. Thompson added a paid membership option to his blog in 2014, and within six months, 1,000 subscribers were paying him at least $100 a year for premium content. (Mr. Thompson refers to his own publication as a “subscription-based blog, newsletter and podcast.”)

When Mr. McKenzie founded Substack with his colleagues Chris Best and Jairaj Sethi in 2017, their first recruit to the platform was Bill Bishop, whose free newsletter, Sinocism, had 30,000 subscribers. On his first day publishing it on Substack, he brought in $100,000 in subscriptions. Substack, then as now, took 10 percent.

Today, many platforms and products, including Beehiiv, Kit, Memberful, Ghost, Lede and Patreon, help writers create paid publications. But Substack is widely considered to be the largest, with over 50,000 revenue-earning publications. The company reports that it has tens of millions of active subscribers and five million paid subscriptions. It declined to share concrete subscriber numbers, including the number of paid subscribers.

Because the category is relatively new, there isn’t enough public data yet on who is paying for newsletters, or how many they are paying for.



Source link